


Holiday Trimmings

by AuthorGod



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, First Time, M/M, Oblivious Sherlock, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:16:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8931580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorGod/pseuds/AuthorGod
Summary: “I’ll get you a nice Christmas present?”
Or, John and Sherlock have a nice holiday for once.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am so bad..SO BAD.. at writing fluff. But all this season for content has caught me feeling feelings and I just need these lads to be happy for a minute. And I'll write some damn bad fic to make it happen for me.

John moves back home on a Saturday in December. 

Sherlock hadn’t allowed himself to hope for it, did not want to pressure John to move in any direction that he was not ready to go. By the time they finally knew the truth and depth of Mary’s deceit, events had already been set in motion that had to be seen through to their twisted, traumatized ends.

“Well,” John says, “I’m here.” He twists the handle of luggage, the bulk swiveling and knocking against a knee.

Cold air pours through the door, stinging cheeks and eliciting a shiver. Sherlock’s shoulders twitch and he tugs the silk dressing gown more securely across his belly. “Yes you are,” he shifts in the doorway.

“Is that okay?” John asks, voice soft, eyebrow raised in that way John has when he’s really asking if Sherlock, in particular, is okay, and doesn’t John know that the only time Sherlock truly feels at home is when they are together? Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but sniffs and quickly hugs John tight around the shoulders, before he is able to talk himself out of it.

“Yeah,” John whispers against the collar of Sherlock’s dressing gown, his voice frayed at the edges, “Yeah, I missed you too.”

\----

 

“We should do Christmas here this year,” John shouts from the stairs, then lets loose a string of curses when a box slips out of his arms and goes tumbling down the flight from his bedroom. Something sounds like it’s breaking inside, glass popping and scraping against other shards of thin glass. “You little shit,” he tells the box and kicks it vengefully down the last step before dragging it into the sitting room. Sherlock slides from his hair onto the floor and rips the tape from the lid.

“Is that any way to speak to the baby Jesus?” Sherlock holds up the porcelain holy infant, now sans an arm.

“How about we make a pact right now never to tell Mrs. Hudson I shattered her manger.” John looks in the box of broken wise men and legless camels, the headless Virgin Mary.

“What’s in it for me? She’ll just assume I’m the one who let God and friends go balls up on the staircase, anyways.”

“Can you not use God and balls in the same sentence actually,” John laughs into his hand, then swipes it through his hair. Sherlock’s fingers twitch in sympathetic longing. He’s been lucky enough to get a hand in John’s hair a couple times, but always in the functional sense. Never to scratch his fingers against John’s scalp.

John has soft hair.

“I’ll get you a nice Christmas present?”

Sherlock clears his throat. “It’s not nice if you tell me beforehand, now I’ll be expecting it. I won’t know if you’re giving it to me out of the goodness of your heart, or because you don’t want Mrs. Hudson tacking on an extra ninety-eight pounds to the rent because you flung the baby jesus down a flight of stairs.” 

Of course it’s teasing, Sherlock would take anything John wanted to give him, anything whatsoever, and love it dearly. He still has the Hello Kitty Pez dispenser John had gotten him as joke for his birthday, tucked away in his nightstand drawer. He couldn’t even bear to open it and eat those disgusting pink candies that bear a uncomfortably strong resemblance to ecstasy. Don’t children eat those things? Seems a bit mad. Unless the point is to have your nine year old sweating in the smoking area and telling strangers how much they love them.

Anyways.

John shrugs, “Alright, well. Guess I’ll have to plead my case another way,” and with that, John leans forward and kisses the side of Sherlock’s mouth. 

The touch is light, fleeting, but John’s lips are warm and soft pressed against the right corner of his lips before Sherlock’s smile drops into something more open-mouthed and bewildered

“Hhhuh,” exhales Sherlock, even though that is not at all what he’ll mean an hour from now when the shock wears off.

John looks a little shocked by it as well, eyes gone all big and blue, he tries to form a few words and settles on, “That,” before clearing his throat and slowly pushing the box under his chair. “That,” he says again, pointing at Sherlock who is frozen in place and probably gawping. “I just thought--” John wraps it up with a very emphatic, “Hm.”

 

After John leaves the room, Sherlock goes into the bathroom and touches the spot on his lips over and over.

\---

 

“Maybe,” John suggests and nudges a bit of broccoli across his plate, “-we should go away for Christmas.” 

Sherlock sits back into his chair, glances at Mrs. Hudson out of the corner of his eye while she puts on the kettle. “Where would you suggest?”

“I don’t know, I hear Alaska is lovely. Remote. Different. We’ll have a white christmas.”

John has lost his mind if-- _“Alaska?_ Don’t you know there are _moose_ in Alaska, and _bears?_ ” And hardly any wifi signals? Mrs. Hudson clears her throat loudly.

“What have you against moose and bears?” 

“I’m not a tremendous fan of any wild animal that could eat me and then I wouldn’t even have a signal to call the local gaming authority to tell them I’m being eaten.”

John rolls his eyes, sighs and shakes his head with a small smile like he knows something Sherlock doesn’t. He gets up from the table and pats Sherlock’s shoulder on the way out, “Moose don’t eat people, darling.”

“I--” Sherlock starts, stops, stammers, _darling_ , “Don’t they?”

John laughs his way out of the room and down the hall to Mrs. Hudson’s toilet, and it’s not until Sherlock can’t hear him anymore that he realises his colossal error.

John offered to go away somewhere with Sherlock, alone, with _Sherlock_ , and Sherlock, being oblivious, went on about moose and bears. He wants to melt into his chair, spill onto Mrs. Hudson’s lino in mortification.

“Fuck!” Sherlock says out loud, fists balling on the table, “Stupid!” Mrs. Hudson swats the back of his head, “Ow! What’s that for?”

She gives him a look that says _you should know_ and sets a cup of tea in front of him. The steam billows upward in into cloudy wisps that curl and twist, and disappear.

\---

“It’s like a science experiment, John!” Sherlock stirs the pan of Scottish tablet, he’s never made Christmas sweets before and honestly he’s a little excited. He had no idea how involved it would be. The toffee had been an unmitigated success, he’d given loads of it to Lestrade who went on and on about how much he liked it. It made Sherlock feel nice, so he kept going.

“If I stop stirring it’ll crystallize the whole batch. Aren’t you, what, half Scot? Shouldn’t you know these things?”

“A quarter, and all I said was that the colour looked a bit off. I in no way was critiquing your form. Do you want the setting pan, yet?”

Sherlock nods and John steps toward the cupboard behind Sherlock’s head. “You’re blocking it,” and John slides his hand against Sherlock’s ribcage. It would be a perfunctory gesture, has been in the past, but this time John’s thumb moves in a small caress over a rib and because Sherlock is hyper aware of any time John touches him, it suddenly becomes the center of all of Sherlock’s focus. There isn’t room in his thoughts for the procedures of sweets making, not when Sherlock has to consider the gentle pressure of John’s hand and the path his thumb travels over the wrinkle in his vest. 

He drops the pot of beaten tablet.

“Watch it!” John yanks on Sherlock now, pulling him backward before the tablet can splatter hot, melted sugar all over his feet. Sherlock goes pliantly with him, fighting the urge to arch back a little when both of John’s hands go on Sherlock’s hips to steady him away from the mess.

The tablet spreads into a thick sheet on the lino, already hardening.

“Just like Nanna used to make,” John laughs, the high pitched, cute, sort of breathless one, that always makes Sherlock fall impossibly deeper in love with him. “You ‘kay? Any get on you?” And does John have any idea how he makes Sherlock’s head go all funny when he’s near, and it’s not fair?

Sherlock looks down at his feet, catches a glimpse of John’s fingers still steady over his hipbones. “You think it’s salvageable?” he says, voice gone a little airy. 

John’s hands slide away, “Mmh, well, we did sweep this morning, so technically…”

 

Moments later they’re on the ground together, scraping up bits of still cooling tablet, being disgusting and eating bits of it. “We’ll break it up and give it to Mycroft,” Sherlock says, using a spatula to pry it from the lino. 

John laughs and laughs and makes Sherlock’s heart swell bigger than it’s ever been.

 

\---

 

They do end up staying at Baker street for the holiday. Mrs. Hudson strings fairy lights all about the flat, puts out poinsettias, artfully places holly and ivy across the mantles and coyly pins a mistletoe above the kitchen entryway. She looks at Sherlock and winks like this is something she has done for him specifically, as if Sherlock isn’t going to spend the night faithfully avoiding the area because it’s best to avoid an awkward situation all together.

Hard to imagine this time a year ago, Sherlock was exactly an hour away from shooting a man in the head. The memory of that whole time draws tight across Sherlock’s chest, a torrent of guilt and sadness and panic, of loneliness so absolute that Sherlock felt he was drowning every minute of the day.

“Something on your mind?” Harry leans into Sherlock’s line of sight from where he’d grown still and lost in thought. “Or some _one_ ,” she raises her brows conspiratorially, nods toward her brother, and passes Sherlock a glass of Mrs. Hudson’s mulled wine. She keeps a mineral water for herself and sips at it. “Red always did look nice on him.”

“Scarlet,” Sherlock corrects, and agrees.

Harry snorts, says, “Gay,” and nudges him with an elbow. Of course Sherlock can allow it, it’s nice to have another obvious non-heterosexual in the room. He likes Harry quite a bit, mostly because she is much like John though neither of them can see the similarities. Perhaps it is because they are so similar that they irritate each other, constantly frustrated by one repeating the other’s mistakes. Both too stubborn, too smart for their own good, both are beautiful in their own way.

Harry also has John’s eyes, dark cobalt. The colour of the sea after cold storms, the kind that you aren’t sure what colour they are until you get right up close and lost there. It’s maudlin, and Sherlock doesn’t care.

 

Lestrade shows up around half seven with Molly, still haven’t yet worked up the courage to actually ask her for a date, and maybe a nudge toward the mistletoe coupled with a few glasses of wine will purge the man of some of his shyness. 

Not that Sherlock has any room to talk. Even now that John has taken to flirting with him, Sherlock can’t sort how to do it _back_ for fear that he’s misinterpreted the signs. It’s happened before. 

 

Some gifts are exchanged. Sherlock ends up with mostly gift cards, per usual, since somehow people think he is hard to shop for. Ridiculous. Who doesn’t like crockery? Sherlock has a collection of silk dressing gowns as well, hasn’t anyone noticed by now? Molly, always thoughtful, gives Sherlock a redeemable as well, but it’s to Laboratoire des Sources, a little product boutique in southeastern France where Sherlock orders from.

 

John gives him a new slide case. It’s truly beautiful, an antique. The design is classically victorian, sturdy mahogany wood with a brass latch and handle. Sherlock’s initials are engraved onto a rectangular plate on the lid. 

Sherlock suddenly regrets ordering him the complete collection of David Attenborough in a moment of panic because everything else seemed too intimate. Of course John had said he loved it, thanked him, and that makes it all the more horrifying. John gets a truly lovely, considerate gift for once, and Sherlock returns with a 292 minute narrative on reptiles and amphibians. _Life in Cold Blood_ blasted across the front. Charming. 

 

“John this…” Sherlock runs his fingers across the moulding on the lip of the lid, “It’s.. Thank you.”

John shrugs, “I mean, it’s no Attenborough but-”

Sherlock puts a hand over his face and groans, “Oh my god I _knew_ you’d--”

John only chuckles, fond about it, and puts a hand on the small of Sherlock’s back, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, s’funny though. A big departure from my standard package of socks, so I can see why you went there.”

All the other guests have gathered in the corner of the room by the window, Harry is chatting up Molly and doing a good job of it up judging from the way Lestrade looks on sadly from over his scotch glass. Eventually people begin making their excuses to leave, Mrs. Hudson puts up the leftover nibbles and kisses John and Sherlock on their cheeks and wishes them Merry Christmas, before telling them to clean the dishes and hoover the biscuit crumbs before they get smashed into her rugs.

Sherlock is stacking glasses in soapy water when he hears John clearing his throat awkwardly behind him. Sherlock turns, yellow rubber gloves still dripping, to see see John standing in the entryway to the kitchen. “Can I help you..?” Sherlock asks, expectant and impatient to finish chores he’s only doing to make up for the terrible christmas gift. 

“Really?” John says, a little incredulous, “ _Sherlock_ , come on, do I need to drag you under myself?”

Sherlock looks side to side, dish water drips down his forearm and dampens his rolled shirtsleeves. “Under what?”

“Wow,” John says, and then he’s walking across the room, grabbing Sherlock by the front of his shirt and tugging him forward in determination. “This isn’t the sort of suave thing I was aiming for, but, here.” They’re standing face to face, or, John’s face to Sherlock’s collarbone, more like, and John sighs once more and points above them. “May I?”

The mistletoe Mrs. Hudson hung earlier dangles idly from the moulding, red ribbon tied around the stem, swinging a little from an air current. 

“Oh,” Sherlock says, furrowing his brow at it, then, slowly, “ _Oh!_ Did you--”

“Yes.”

“--Want to..?”

_”Yes_.”

“Really?” Sherlock asks, still sceptical, because even in spite of the signs leading here it still seems unreal. After wanting something so much and for long, it starts to feel too impossible to have, the longer the wanting goes on.

John answers by putting his hands on either side of Sherlock’s face, pulling him down while John goes up on tiptoes, and touching their lips together. It’s sweet, a gentle press, the warm sigh of breath against Sherlock’s cheek as they pull away then come back together at another angle. It goes on like this for a several hazy seconds, safe and tame, then Sherlock feels John’s hand begin to slip from his cheeks and it’s not safe and tame anymore because _!!!!_ John is _kissing_ him, that’s fantastic and it absolutely must not end!

Sherlock’s own hands (damn, still in the yellow washing gloves, no matter) shoot up, fingers circling around John’s wrist and holding them firmly in place. Sherlock thinks about jerking backward, but is afraid of falling, so he pushes John forward instead until his back lands with bump against the frame of the wall. Trapped there in that place by Sherlock and his body and the things they want to do. 

John makes a _nngh_ sound that buzzes against Sherlock’s lips, and that’s about when the kiss turns into nips and licks, and hands everywhere, everywhere. John’s fingers pushed into Sherlock’s hair; Sherlock’s rubber gloves sailing skyward with a rough jerk of his wrists, then Sherlock’s fingers dug into the front of John’s jumper, his ribs, the dip of his back and pulling them hard together.

“Christ,” John bites out, kisses wetly under Sherlock’s jaw and down to the little hallow of skin at base of his throat. “Um,” he says, “Um. You.”

“Right,” Sherlock replies earnestly, then laughs because no, he has no idea what John is on about. He didn’t actually say anything, after all. But that hardly matters in light of what’s happening. Sherlock has fantasised about this moment so often and so much, and the reality is infinitely better. There’s clumsiness here, one leans the wrong way, the frame must be digging into John’s back, Sherlock isn’t really sure what else to do but to get as close as possible and touch all over, and it’s all of these little details that Sherlock could never account for even in his most constructed daydream that makes this so amazing.

“I love you, you know that,” Sherlock whispers roughly, tears budding in the corners of his eyes because he can’t help it. He cries when he’s happy and always has done since a child. Sherlock’s thumbs push over John’s cheekbones, over the soft greying hairs at his temples.

John nods, “I know, I know, I know. It’s true for me too.”

 

Getting across the flat and into Sherlock’s bedroom isn’t exactly simple when it’s two people who refuse to let go of one another long enough to actually walk in a straight line. Sherlock’s hands all over John’s bottom, John’s hands both tangled up in Sherlock’s hair: Heaven. John takes advantage of the ungainliness by tripping them and snogging Sherlock soundly on the sofa until their squirming makes them fall off, but finally they get there. 

Sherlock gets John’s scarlet jumper off, and they both are cursing and laughing at each other’s button downs before deciding it would be simpler and more expedient to just use their own fingers on their own shirts. Kecks and pants go in a pile somewhere on the side of the bed, along with socks, and then John is nudging Sherlock with sure hands onto the bed and climbing over him, straddling his hips. John lets most of his weight drop, pressing himself solidly against Sherlock and making him gasp at the feel of their erections straining together. Sherlock lifts into the sensation, desperate to make friction, and feels some degree of smugness to see some of John’s composure lost when his eyelids flutter and droop in pleasure.

Strange, how it is possible to feel like everything inside you is burning for something, but to also feel so calm and at peace. To finally not be at odds with the world because something is slowly sinking into place. That is how Sherlock feels with John over him, pressing them together, his weight suppressing Sherlock’s nervous system, stilling him in such a deep sense, just as John’s lips light another fire.

It’s an eternity of kisses, hormones gearing up to reach a tipping point, John pulling Sherlock’s hair too hard by accident and apologising profusely as his fingers trace the angle of Sherlock’s cheeks, his lips, the concave of his belly. Eventually John’s fingers fumble about Sherlock’s nightstand for something that can be used as lubricant while Sherlock urges him on and finally _inside_ and he’s never done this before with anyone but he’s asking for it anyways. Always longing, always wanting more than he expected. Always reaching for John over and over, loving John even before he knew he was allowed. 

The trip from ‘unsure if feels good’ to _Just let John fuck me_ happens somehow without Sherlock noticing it, but everything turns into, “John,” followed by, “Oh my god,” and finally, “ _Ah, unghfff, please pl-_ ” Sherlock doesn’t know how he got this incoherent this quickly. 

It probably has something to do with John stroking him all over. Something to do with how he’s pushing Sherlock back rhythmically into the pillows until Sherlock is all breath and shudder and shivering hips. John whispers soft words of praise and encouragement in his ear, saying Sherlock’s name with infinite tenderness. 

“That’s it, Sherlock.” And, “Beautiful.” And, “God, you’re so hot,” which makes Sherlock laugh, but then also come because there’s something inexplicably endearing about how John says it. John’s response to all of this, to Sherlock’s panting mouth through orgasm, is emphatic. He manages to press impossibly closer to Sherlock’s body, face nudged into the junction where neck and shoulder arc where he groans a bitten off, sort of surprised sounding _fuck_ that makes Sherlock’s face heat up.

 

John is looking down right now at Sherlock like he’s done something historical, secured world peace or found the cure to seasonal depression, and not instead just come in Sherlock’s arse; all proud and full up with good old human weakness. 

“God, how I love you,” he says in a rush, pulls gently from within Sherlock and collapses next to him. In the absence of a flannel, John shrugs and just retrieves his vest from the clothes explosion of earlier and uses it to clean Sherlock. It’s achingly intimate, the way John takes care with him, like Sherlock is something he means to keep close and safe. 

“Does it always feel--” Sherlock asks, gestures off into the empty corner of the room, “--like this? I mean, it feels strange doesn’t it?” John looks at him, brow a low concerned line. “Not bad strange, mind you. Good kind. Love doesn’t seem like it ought to be natural, but it is, scientifically, sort of. It is, I think.” Sherlock is babbling, still high on oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, happiness and afterglow washing over him.

“You mean, how is it I can love you, but you’re also the reason I go a bit mad, sometimes?”

“Madly in love?” Sherlock snickers at the terrible joke, fingers tracing over John’s bicep. “But, yes.”

John chuckles too, nose wrinkling with it as he looks over to the twinkle lights Sherlock hung next to the bed. “Are you always this chatty after you get off?”

“Rude,” Sherlock pinches the soft skin at John’s left hip, squirms until his head is laying over John’s shoulder. 

John strokes the groove of Sherlock’s spine, “Go asleep. Merry Christmas,” He kisses Sherlock on the mouth, lingers there.

All Sherlock knows, is that what he feels for John is enveloping, it curls up warm in his chest, pulses down into his fingertips and grows. He doesn’t say this, of course. 

He doesn’t need to.


End file.
